


masks and things like that

by lejf



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, POV Outsider, Sam asserts his dominance over Dean's girlfriend lol, this is not a 'Sam realises Dean is insecure' fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 05:56:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10075262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lejf/pseuds/lejf
Summary: “Dean’s insecure,” Leila says.“Really?” says the boy next to her, watching her with his slanted hazel eyes.





	

Leila has to take a seat for a moment and readjust her hair after ducking out the janitor’s closet with her boyfriend, who’s grinning at her and waving goodbye as he heads to his class at the other end of school. She’s still tingling from head to toe and maybe a little tender, and she raises an absent-minded hand to her lips after she waves in return. Dean does that. He can just fuck the foundations out from under people.

Jesus. She kind of wishes he’d stay, but he’s clearly just looking for a good romp in the sheets. Or closet, rather.

She goes out into the courtyard to smoke, where some boys in their free period are playing ball. They eye her up as she goes by. They shout louder, try to play harder, but she’s just been fucked by Dean, for god’s sake. _He’s_ her boyfriend.

“Hi,” says a voice. She hadn’t even noticed there was a boy sitting out by the chain link fence with a book in his lap. He seems small somehow. Maybe it’s just the way he hunches protectively over nothing, or the way it doesn’t seem right for him to be sitting out in the light. It’s as if the eye has an auto-corrector, and when it goes over him, it quietly erases the boy with his hazel-tipped gaze.

“Hey, kid. Looking for someone?”

“Yeah. I’m just waiting,” he says as she comes to stand beside him and lights up. There’s something about his voice she can’t quite pin down—a quality to it that seems to keep her listening. “So, Dean, huh?”

She tries to gauge his expression and the extent of his condescension, but he’s looking down at his book, hiding behind a tuft of brown hair. “Yeah, Dean. What’ve you gotta say about it?”

“What’s he like?”

So that’s what it is. He wants to be a big kid. He wants to get the girl and swagger around the halls. “What do you think he is? He’s freakin’ hot, he is, riding around in that car of his and owning the world around him.”

“Just that? Aren’t you his girlfriend?”

What does he want, a psych eval? She looks at him again, this folded-up boy, and then she looks over at the boys playing ball who’re still glancing over at her every now and then because she’s fuckin’ pretty, that’s all she seems to be.

And so she says, “You know what they say about guys who throw their weight around.”

“What do they say?” the boy presses. She purposefully takes her time.

“They’ve got something to make up for.” She takes a long drag, puffing out smoke as if it’ll obscure what they’re saying. He waits until she’s got her thoughts lined up again. “Sometimes, when we’re together, he’s _looking_ for me when I’m right there.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know,” she admits.

“Okay,” he says.

“But he must be trying to fill up shoes that’re too big for him, you know? He's insecure. All that bravado’s taking up his space. Half of what’s _him_ is the mystery, and I think—” she pauses, eyes him sideways, “—mystery never lives up to its name.”

The boy makes an inquiring noise in his throat. “Really?”

“What’s he actually? I’ve never seen hair nor hide of his family or any sorta money. Some day I’m expecting to walk into a retail store and he’ll just be there behind the counter.”

“That’s a pretty strange thing to say about your boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend. As _if_ he’ll stay. Touch and go,” she says, a little bitterly. “Can’t keep up the mystery otherwise.”

“You can lie,” the boy says quietly. “That works too.”

“But when I find out the truth… what’s that gonna be?” She flicks her cigarette away, and it lands on the concrete and smoulders. “Don’t get me wrong. I do like him. I do. I just wish I could see under that mask of bravado, but, fuck, aren’t I a bit afraid to?”

She says, “If I were a good person, I wouldn’t be scared.”

“Under the mask?”

“There’s gotta be something, right? No one can _actually_ live down roads and breathe out smoke. There's got to be more to him. That, you know, I can actually connect with. He can be the dream boy to everyone else... but not to me. I'd just wish he'd show me.”

The boy pauses, and then he says, “Maybe.”

“He hardly ever turns up to class. So what, it’s a cool thing _now,_ but in the future? He’s not gonna have any job, he’s not gonna have connections, and he’s not gonna have any money unless it’s scrubbing floors. If he turns to crime then his everything’ll be all flawed, or if he’s got no money he’ll just go dirty and unkempt and just another hobo. He has to worry about his future __sometime__.”

The boy says, “I know why he looks for you.”

“What? Why?” she says.

“Dean’s looking for your meaning. Because he’s wondering why he’s fucking this girl in another no-face town when that means less time with the people he cares about,” he says.

“Excuse me?” she says. The profanity sounds so wrong coming from his mouth. “What the hell? What do _you_ know about him?”

“Christ,” the boy scoffs. “Can’t you stop looking for things in other people when it’s just because you want people to look for something in you?”

She hits him. Hard. It cracks whip-like across the courtyard and all the ball-players stop to look. The boy is holding his face and his eyes are wide and shocked for a second before they snap into an icy coldness.

“See, you see?” the boy says, and his book is shut, he’s unfolding as he stands, and he’s still got his hand across the redness blooming in his cheek, and his eyes are locked directly on her. “Look out there. That’s you. The pretty girl boys want. You want people to see past it, but you've played it. You can call it a fake all you can, but you can’t divorce it. It’ll always be a part of you, and even if you leave it, it would have _been_ you.”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” she warns.

“And you like it, don’t you? How else would you have gotten Dean? You fucking _like it,_ ” he says. He’s taller than her. She hadn’t realised that when he was sitting. He’d looked so small, then. “That’s a part of you now. Just like that, Dean isn’t some boy with masks. He _is_ confident. He _does_ own bits and pieces of the world and just because he’s unsure or confused sometimes doesn’t mean everything else is fake. His face is an amalgam and there you go pretending to rip away bits and pieces of him because you think there’s something so special beneath—”

She moves forward to hit him again—the _mouth_ on this bitch! But as her hand swings forwards, his own darts out to lock her wrist in a hold.

“He gives you so much of himself and you _spit_ it back at his face like this as if the truth isn't good enough! As _if_ it isn't goddamn romantic enough! I _hate_ people like you,” he hisses. And then one of the courtyard boys looms behind this terrible, terrible boy, and a wooden bat comes down and connects with his head with such force that Leila actually hears it crack.

The bat or his head, she’s not sure, but he crumples forwards like an empty sack and the second bat cracks against his shoulders. Her blood bellows in her ears.

The bellowing isn’t her blood. She realises that the next second when Dean appears and charges into the boys and scatters them like pins, punches one so hard that blood flies everywhere and Dean is yelling something, “What the _fuck_ ?! Sammy! Sammy!” And he’s scooping up the boy on the ground ( _Sammy_ ) and his hands are stroking his face as he's yelling at her. “You never touch him again, you hear me? You _never_ touch him _ever_ again!”

She’s lost for words. She has never seen Dean like this. Never, ever, ever. He’s always been flippant, too cool to care, but now his hands are white and he’s shaking from sheer rage and clutching that boy to him as though, if that Sammy were to be hurt, Dean would would fly apart at the edges and break.

“Never touch him again,” he warns, dark and dangerous, a thousand miles away and just as untouchable. Unreserved hate seems to simmer under his skin. One wrong touch and he’ll snap. He’ll bite, and he’ll draw blood, again and again.

Who _is_ he? Who is Sammy? She has to wonder. Dean’s lover?

Dean’s got a gun in his jacket. How had she never seen that?

It doesn’t matter, because Dean vanishes with the unconscious boy in his arms and when she goes in to find Dean and answers the next day, Sammy’s hospital bed is empty.

It doesn’t matter, because the black car never turns up at school again. Because they’ve disappeared down the road in a dark tidal wave, rallying banners of white seagulls flying overhead, arrows going nowhere in a current of ever-shifting truth.

**Author's Note:**

> quickie because i'm supposed to be working on artl chap 2 & lots of stuff, lol, don't tell Jo. 
> 
> gonna play with this idea more in the future. i like it


End file.
